Taps for the greatest generation
Today is the 70th anniversary of Pearl Harbor Day. I reposted something I wrote a few years ago in honor of the occasion, but I have a few more thoughts to add.
Seventy years is a long time, but not so long that there aren’t veterans of that day still alive and even kicking. But the sad truth is that each year there will be fewer and fewer to tell the tale, and one day there will be none.
The funeral I attended yesterday was for one of those veterans, not of Pearl Harbor but of World War II. He had graduated from college at the ripe old age of 18 and enlisted almost immediately, becoming one of the youngest naval officers ever.
I learned all these facts for the first time at his funeral. The coffin was flag-draped, and the stories of his service were related as part of the eulogy. At the gravesite there was another surprise (at least to me): a two-person honor guard from the Navy, who removed the flag before the coffin was lowered into the grave, folded it into the familiar triangular packet, and presented it to his widow.
Before that, the older of the two had played Taps on a bugle, standing (as the rules dictate) “at a distance 30 to 50 yards from the grave site while a ‘Final Salute’ is given.” This particular bugler was some sort of musical genius; I have never before heard Taps played with such a beautifully heartbreaking tone.
[NOTE: See the Wiki entry for more about military funerals, including who is eligible.]
My father-in-law was a Pearl Harbor vet. He was wounded and sent back to the mainland on a hospital ship – a very scary ride until crossing under the Golden Gate Bridge.
Characteristic of that generation, and of vets in general, he didn’t mention it much. He was a private guy, so he didn’t go to any Pearl Harbor-related gatherings.
For him it was all about getting back to normal life after the war, getting an education via the GI Bill (the gratitude for which he mentioned often) and starting a family and a business.
A great guy.
Can’t even read of a military funeral with the attendant honors without misting up. I’ve been to many such funerals, but the emotional impact of the flag presentation followed by taps is always a strong one for me.
You said, “I learned all these facts for the first time at his funeral.” That is so typical of the WWII veterans. Most came home, took off their uniforms and set about building a better future. One such man affected my life. He came home and started the first ski lift operation in our area. He all but gave lift tickets to youngsters so we coulld learn to ski and would have something healthy and challenging to do on winter weekends. The only thing I ever learned about his service was that he was wounded in Italy. End of story.
In fact, most veterans do pretty much the same. Unless they have a gift for story-telling and want to share some of their tales, we know little or nopthing about their war-time experiences.
The author, Steven Pressfield, has said, and I agree with him, that we actually die twice. The first is our actual death, the second is when no one living remembers our name and deeds. That is one reason why war memorials are important. They keep alive the memory of those who sacrificed for us. It’s one reason why I love the Vietnam Memorial Wall. Those names are preserved for us for a long, long time.
So many of these men are quite sad as to what has happened to the country they had fought so hard for…
and not just them…
there are so many moments to remember, we will never see most of them, nor realize it.
i have thousands of such recorded moments from rare life, to famous people, to fashion.
even our memories of WWII, the war in the pacific, and such.. are all defined by the motly collection of moments the photographers who often are forgotten…
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Robert Peraza, who lost his son Robert David Peraza in 9/11, pauses at his son’s name at the North Pool of the 9/11 Memorial.
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Christians protect Muslims during prayer in Cairo, Egypt.
Slain Navy SEAL Jon Tumilson’s dog “Hawkeye” lies next to his casket during funeral services in Rockford, Iowa. Tumilson was one of 30 American soldiers killed in Afghanistan on August 6 when their helicopter was shot down during a mission to help fellow troops who had come under fire.
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A U.S. Army soldier takes five with an Afghan boy during a patrol in Pul-e Alam, a town in Logar province, eastern Afghanistan.
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and mostly…
it was all the work of men..
men who today do not have their homes, families, progeny, rights, jobs, and such..
“Women have always been the primary victims of war. Women lose their husbands, their fathers, their sons in combat.” — Hillary Clinton
(not that she actually cares about them)
UVa law team fights for equality for women in combat
www2.dailyprogress.com/news/2011/dec/04/uva-law-team-fights-equality-women-combat-ar-1513873/
“We now live in a world with very little formal discrimination,” said Coughlin, a professor at the University of Virginia School of Law.
However, one glaring exception still exists, she said – the military’s ban on women taking on combat roles.
Because of the exclusion, women are denied formal recognition, opportunities for advancement in their careers and respect, Coughlin said.
[no mention that women rise faster, have taken more positions without doing the work, and that the morale of the men is down because of it… ]
Determined to change these realities, Coughlin and four second-year law students – Kyle Mallinak, Rebecca Cohn, Helen O’Beirne and Ariel Linet – have teamed up to challenge the combat exclusion.
[good idea… someone has to defend us]
“Our overall objective is to educate the public, the courts, whoever necessary that women have been engaged in protecting the homeland in combat roles for a very long time, even before the founding of the nation,” Coughlin said. “Those contributions should be recognized and honored, not trivialized.”
[when where they trivialized? the new memorial celebrats the 8 women killed in vietnam, and ignores the 58,000 or so men that died…]
Two statutory bans on women in combat, first introduced in 1948, were struck down.
The National Defense Authorization Act for 2011 required the defense and service secretaries to study whether changes are needed to allow women equitable opportunities in the military.
The team is exploring two avenues to initiate change.
“The next step is to work through our lawyer to identify plaintiffs and allow her to bring them on board for a potential lawsuit, or to approach the Pentagon and suggest they change the policy of their own accord,” Mallinak said. “We’re preparing for either eventuality and to advance on either front.”
[you have to love their relativism in the idea that being attacked in the supply lines is the same as hand to hand combat when munitions run out…. ]
My father was a Navy veteran of the Korean War, as were all 3 of his brothers. The Navy had an honor guard at his funeral. My brother was sitting in the front row wearing his Senior Chief Petty Officer dress uniform, with 25 years worth of hash marks on the sleeve and a chest full of medals. The two junior enlisted sailors folding the flag kept nervously glancing over at him, and one of them folded her glove into the flag. They had to unroll it and take it out. My dad would have loved that.
And I hate to tell you, Neo, but the bugle was probably electronic and playing a recording. I, too, thought it was haunting until my brother told me that they’re almost all recordings now. My 10-year old learned taps on his recorder and played it at his grandpa’s grave last Father’s Day. It still chokes me up thinking about it.
My father, a Navy WWII vet, died in 2002. I, along with my uncle (his younger brother) made sure he got a military funeral. The honor guard was dressed in white (it was summer) and they had some sort of green insignia. I don’t remember the exact details, but I’d never seen that before.
They presented me with the flag. It was a very emotional ceremony. I had held together pretty well up to that point, but when the officer knelt before me and gave the speech about “the thanks of a grateful nation”, I pretty much lost it.
Taps was played on a boom box. They skillfully hid it and I didn’t notice it until they were packing up afterwards. I wasn’t upset or taken aback, though, because I had read a magazine article earlier which said that, because of the large number of WWII vets that were dying, there was a serious shortage of buglers. Some funerals were employing Boy Scout buglers, and some were using recordings. It all depended on circumstances and whether a military bugler was available.
LisaM: Well, if it was a fake bugle playing a recording, I can honestly say it was a great recording, because it sounded beautiful.
I do okay at funerals, except for the military ones.
Went to the funeral of a distant relative, an two-tour OIF vet, killed in an accident after he got out. The Patriot Guard Riders were there–check those guys out including their website–and an honor guard, plus the guy’s last CO.
I got close to losing it when the honor guard started to fold the flag.
We as a society have been anchored by the Greatest Generation for so long. Maybe some of out difficulties are the result of losing the steadying influence. Might have to do some work ourselves.
My mother’s hometown boyfriend was a sailor killed at the Pearl Harbor attack. She kept the loss deep within her heart. We did not find out about her Pearl Harbor sailor until after our mother had died, when we were going over a memorabilia scrapbook with my aunt, and asked about certain cards in it.
Every December 7 I think of her sailor and my mother’s loss.
Pearl Harbor influenced my life, because had her sailor not died, my mother would have married her sailor, not my father.
It is a shame that the spirit the drove the country in WWII is slipping away.
Since I was six on 12/7/41 I was pretty oblivious to the specific event; although my wife says she recalls the day vividly. It did not take long to see the changes in everyone’s life. My older cousins–gone. The boy next door, and the one across the street–gone. Soon to be gone forever as lost pilots in the Army Air Corps. My father–gone; first to Brazil for war related work, and then off to the Navy. There were few families that were not affected directly; and nearly everyone (with the inevitable exceptions) felt the effects of rationing if nothing else. It seemed like everyone at home was involved.
By third grade I was a “Junior Commando” along with my classmates. We earned promotion by collecting old newspapers, scrap metal and bacon grease for the war effort. And were we diligent. If it wasn’t secured, it was gone. Marching wh other JCs before school. Why? Well, because we sometimes were invited to march in patriotic parades proudly wearing our JC arm bands and caps. We regularly bought our 10 cent savings stamps at school, and watched our stamp books slowly filling, because a full book could be traded for a war bond.
It was a time of high anxiety, and a time of great commitment. Most families gathered around the radio in the evening for the war news. The mail was a life line, even though it was always weeks behind. A telegram was the worst nightmare. Shared anxiety, and shared commitment. Times have changed.
On our block when I was a kid, every single father had either been in the military or worked in a defense plant. Every single one.
I was in the Army during the Vietnam era, and saw first-hand what huge problems we had with the draft, but the ever-smaller and more isolated military — great from the war-winning point of view — can’t be a good thing for our society.